UCLA’s Dietrich Riley stays close to football after medical retirement

UCLA safety Dietrich Riley (1) stretches during the football spring showcase college football game in the Rose Bowl on April 27, 2013. A spinal injury ended his football career. (Keith Birmingham/Pasadena Star-News)

UCLA safety Dietrich Riley (1) on the sidelines during the football spring showcase college football game in the Rose Bowl on April 27, 2013. (Keith Birmingham/Pasadena Star-News)

It is April 27, 2013, a cool, clear night in Pasadena. The UCLA football team has just wrapped up its annual spring game, announcing a crowd of 20,000 at the Rose Bowl.

Of those, several thousand have poured onto the field, swarming players for autographs and pictures. Perhaps no one is happier to see them than safety Dietrich Riley. For the past 18 months, the former star recruit had been recovering from a frightening neck injury, one that erased what would have been his junior season.

He is ready for his comeback.

A spiky-haired boy comes up to Riley and requests an autograph on the jersey he is wearing. The father asks Riley to write all the way across, and he obliges: “All the way? Why not?” He scrawls his signature, filling the blank above the No. 1 — his number.

Moments earlier, Riley had done the same for another fan, scribbling his name on the man’s shoulder. He hugged a teenage girl, then posed for a picture with two others.

He beams, soaking in the attention. Riley insists he will return, his neck even stronger than it was before the injury. He practiced in spring with a red jersey on, but separated his shoulder when his arm got caught in a one-on-one drill. Only a minor setback, he says.

He does not know that his football career will officially end in three months.

***

Almost every anecdote from Dietrich Riley’s playing days involves hitting. He was always aggressive, so much so that his mother worried that other parents would complain. Her fears were unfounded, but she was still relieved once he moved past flag football.

Freshman safety Tyler Foreman, who idolized Riley when both played youth ball at Pasadena’s Victory Park, recalls the hit on Oregon State’s Jacquizz Rodgers. “It was one of the biggest hits I’ve seen in college football,” Foreman says.

Anthony Jefferson, his longtime roommate, remembers their freshman fall camp. Riley lined up in an “Oklahoma” drill against Malcolm Jones, a 6-foot-1, 210-pound running back named Gatorade National Player of the Year. The drill is simple, calling for two players to run at each other in a narrow corridor. Riley won. “I kind of knew from that point that he was a banger,” Jefferson says.

It began on the front yard. When he was still in elementary school, Riley and his cousin would line up and go “heads up” at each other.

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“That’s when I knew, like man, this is what I’m made for,” he says. “This is me. Throw my body around. Diving and making tackles. Cracking and making hits. … That’s when I knew I was built for contact.”

His mother, Marika McWhorter, never knew much about the sport. She wanted him to play baseball. Her father, Sam, had been a promising second baseman decades ago, eventually signing with the Cleveland Indians organization. In 1963, he set the record for stolen bases at Pasadena City College. A yearbook picture captures him swiping home plate.

Even his godmother, Melinda Helms — who shared his love for the gridiron — preferred that he play basketball.

Riley never doubted his future. He never had the patience for standing at first base. He loved basketball, but it didn’t call to him with equal fervor. He belonged in pads and a helmet, his first — a San Francisco 49ers costume set — bought for $50 when he was three years old. There’s a picture of him wearing them, crouching down in a three-point stance.

He always played with the older kids. Shortly after he hit his growth spurt in eighth grade, he became a legitimate prospect. During his sophomore year at St. Francis High, USC gave him his first offer. Over a dozen followed. He was named to all-star teams by nearly every local newspaper, and Rivals.com rated him the No. 9 safety in the country.

Swayed by Rick Neuheisel and the promise of a rising program, he signed with UCLA.

***

He made an impression immediately, playing in 11 games as a true freshman. The next year, he made four stops in his first career start, a loss to Texas that dropped UCLA to a 1-2 record in 2011. His performance earned him four more starts, but when coaches decided to drop him back down to second-string, he lost focus.

In the week leading up to the Bruins’ Oct. 29 home game against Cal, Riley admits he had a selfish attitude. He didn’t study the game plan enough, didn’t buy into what the coaches were preaching. If he had, he says now, he may still be playing football.

He remembers the play well. Earlier on the drive, he neglected to scan the field and read late on a potential interception. Four plays later, Cal tailback Isi Sofele ran toward the sideline. After gaining six yards, he and Riley collided.

“The guy bounced to the outside and — I wish I had it back — I lunged into the tackle,” Riley says. “I didn’t run my feet through. I didn’t trust my speed. I didn’t run to him. I broke down early and I lunged. I kind of ducked my head and I hit his hip.”

Riley didn’t get up. For what felt like half an hour, the Rose Bowl was almost silent, his teammates and the audience both waiting for any positive sign. He was carted out to the hospital amidst applause, but the prognosis was positive at first. Neuheisel told media that it was likely just a stinger.

Three days later, doctors told him something far more grave: an injury to his C3 and C4 vertebrae, one that would require surgery if he wanted to play again. After consulting with multiple professionals — including Dr. Robert Watkins, who operated on Peyton Manning — Riley underwent single-fusion surgery the following April.

Confusion soon followed. Riley says that Dr. Jeffrey Wang, the surgeon who operated on him at UCLA Medical Center, cleared him in September 2012. He participated in the Bruins’ 2013 spring practices, albeit without contact. But the school wanted to make sure he was safe. After consulting with Watkins and other doctors, UCLA’s team medical staff told Riley in July that he had to medically retire.

Though initially devastated, he eventually accepted an offer to become an undergraduate assistant coaching the defensive backs — a unit he had expected to lead.

His loved ones were conflicted. Riley’s mother wouldn’t force him out of football, but she also didn’t want to see him put his body at risk. Even now, when she sees another injured player, she feels the same fear well up. She’s never liked the sound of football pads hitting.

Helms was hesitant too, but she trusted Riley to make the right decision on his own. “It’s the belly of the beast,” she says. “That’s what that game is.”

***

He says God watched over him that night at the Rose Bowl. As he lay near UCLA’s 20-yard line, feeling slowly trickled back down his arms, his legs. Once strapped to a stretcher, he pointed up at the sky, signaling to 50,000 fans. At around 1 a.m., he was released from Pasadena’s Huntington Hospital, a burning right shoulder his only lingering symptom.

“Why am I able to walk? How am I able to escape that episode?” Riley says. “I was surfing the web last night. A kid from Kentucky, a 16-year-old died from a spinal injury. C3, same one as me. And he died. Why me? How was I able to escape that?”

This is expected narrative. The consummate jock finds renewed appreciation for his health. He realizes there is more to life than football, finds other avenues, succeeds. The injury becomes a blessing in disguise, a lesson for others to expand their horizons beyond the sport.

Dietrich Riley wants to get there. Aside from his injury, his biggest regret is not talking to more people on campus, not breaking out of his football clique. If coaching doesn’t work out, he has other options.

On track to graduate from UCLA with a history degree, he also enrolled in a theater class. Riley had dabbled on stage at St. Francis High, playing Othello in a school production. His instructor was actor Michael Tucci, who played Sonny in the movie “Grease”. Tucci often told Riley he could be more than a football player — a rare message for a teenager with college recruiters flooding his high school campus. A few weeks ago, Riley sent headshots to modeling and acting agencies. He auditioned for pilots, including one for an HBO series. Sports networks have talked to him about job opportunities.

But he still feels cheated, his dreams cut short after 19 games and 57 tackles. Every day, he laces up the same cleats he wore when he injured his neck: white adiZeros with black stripes, size 11.5, tape residue still showing. During practices, he prefers to stand behind the end zone rather than on the sideline. He smiles often, because being peripheral to the game is better than being nowhere near it.

“If I were to not be able to walk again,” he says, “if I were to not be able to breathe again — I would rather have it happen on the football field. This is my comfort zone. This is what I love. Smell the grass, the cleats. Everything. I appreciate this game that much.

“If I had any opportunity to lace them up again, I wouldn’t hesitate. People saying, ‘You still have that spine injury’ — I don’t care. This is all I know.”